mdk

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

Moving along.

Identity politics are totally fine

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

If it is eugenics to try to avoid genetic diseases, then all those gene therapy trials are in trouble. Frankly I hope we are one day able to edit out such genetic defects, although we have a considerable way to go.

@Penny

You're right, it's just.... it's hard for me not to connect this dot back to myself. If a baby is born with one leg, well, that's gonna cost you money, better just kill it. Hard for me not to react to that. And like I said, I'm not talking about a ban on abortion in general -- just with regards to this post-birth murder concept. Sparta used to do that

According to the article the Netherlands alreay has such a list:

Indeed. And it's a very specifically-targeted list which basically amounts to a mercy kill -- again I don't think anybody's happy about that, but it's reasonable.

Ah the old fetus/car loan equivalency. Seriously? How is this even remotely similar? You didn't borrow the fetus from someone...unless ... you DID?!

You borrow it from JEBUS. Naw, again, I'm talking about actual born babies which are alive. I think people who kill their pets because they're too expensive are assholes -- people who kill their actually-born living human baby, because of money, I mean..... I'm having a hard time characterizing that beyond "monstrous."

I suppose it is something that should be left up to the mothers but I personally would never be comfortable euthanizing a healthy newborn.

I dunno, once it's actually born, I don't think it's up to the mother anymore. Everything up until that point, there's a legitimate conflict of rights between the fetus and the mother, and legally speaking you can make an argument either way -- but once born, that conflict goes away. We owe that baby the world and everything in it, and no one should be allowed to just kill it (barring that honestly pretty reasonable Netherlands standard of "Suffering forever with no hope of improvement").

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

Well the FBI wire tapped Manafort because of supposed ties to Russia, not Trump himself.
<Snipped quote>

<Snipped quote>

But Obama himself didn't wiretapped Trump, which is what Trump claimed.

@POOHEAD189

Here's the whole timeline of events. I mean until politifact alters the rating.... FWIW the Manafort phones in question are, in fact, located in Trump Tower.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

In unrelated news, apparently Trump was right about getting wiretapped. Even CNN is reporting on it. Six months ago versus today.

Interesting, innit.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

I am relatively pro-abortion in that I condemn it in the majority of cases but I'm not for banning it...

@Andreyich

Approximately my position as well. I mean "condemn" is a strong word -- I try not to judge (try, I said), but I certainly don't like it. I recognize that it's not my call to make.

Anyway....

That can't be real.

@POOHEAD189

I mean the paper is real. There's nothing to suggest this is actually happening in the real world (I mean, not in a statistically significant way -- there are crazies who put babies in trash cans, but that's not the point). The article is talking about a real paper, which is gleefully sliding down that slippery slope we've been talking about since Roe v Wade. Possibly, I suppose, in the cynical pursuit of controversy, in which case I bought it hook line and sinker.

I personally feel that terminating an infant after birth, barring some sort of encephalopathy or birth defect would be a violation of my Hippocratic oath.

@Penny

I guess this is the part where I play my disability card... let's play it gently. I mean.... there's an element of eugenics in this, right? That's not the reason you (or anyone else, probably) might go along with it, not at all -- but that element is totally there, right? I mean someone, someday, would have to go compile a list of acceptable conditions under which a living baby can be legally murdered. ADD babies live, autistic babies get the axe, or whatever. I don't think anybody anywhere wants to even think about that, let alone actually DO it.

I'm gonna get off that point because this just jumped out at me (from a part of the article you quoted):

However, if a disease has not been detected during the pregnancy, if something went wrong during the delivery, or if economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford."

And what jumps out is, like.... nothing else works that way. If you take out a loan for a car, and then your social or psychological circumstances change and the car becomes a burden, you still have to pay your car loan. If you go to school and major in lesbian dance theory, and the economic circumstances of society change so drastically that lesbian dance theorists aren't making money (who could fathom such a dystopian world?), you still have to pay your student loans. But the author (apparently?) thinks that helpless little babies are a whole other story -- you can just whack them against a wall. Like what in the fuck.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

so apparently this is a thing

Thoughts? You can click the image for the article, which is (somewhat misleadingly) not an actual argument in support of infanticide, but rather a summary (with light counterpoints) to a paper which presents the argument in support of infanticide.

How Would You Have Made Skyrim Better?

So Skyrim was groundbreaking and fun and the mod scene makes it even better and that's great and it was a good game.

If I was going to make it better, I'd build it a little more like Witcher 3. Comparably open world, but what they did was they said "Know what, we're paying professional writers to write professionally, let's make it so that matters." I feel like Witcher 3 gave you some crayons and said "Color in the lines," and the result couldn't fail to be a pretty compelling picture; where Skyrim gave you some wax and some dye and a blank canvas and said "Good luck, maybe smear that into that, and rub it on that, and i dunno kinda looks like a dragon a little?"

There's value to that. I enjoyed doing that. But I enjoyed Witcher more.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@Kratesis I'm not Penny (or am I?), but I think she's calling him racist from previous comments and not the one he just made.

@POOHEAD189

Interested to know what those comments were.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

Controlling our border can be better done without a 2 billion dollar wall we expected someone else to pay for.

@POOHEAD189

ICE seems to think otherwise.

2 Billion? Oh my sweet summer child. It's just racist dog whistling anyway.

@Penny

In this scenario am I the racist, or the dog?

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

So, the border wall.
Good decision? Or Great decision?

@POOHEAD189

Great decision. Without control of the border, immigration policy is meaningless. Our immigration system should help people (ourselves first, and then others). We can't do that without control of our border.